二
基本上說，歐巴馬行政團隊的外交乏善可陳(這件事說來話長)，至
關於美國「重返亞洲」的戰略與政策，建州運動從美國政府一開始提
三
由於世界各地不平靜，不少地方在進行武裝衝突，有些甚至直接在挑
底下這篇由Ralph A. Cossa寫的文章，就是一個很好的例子，這位專攻亞太安全事務
‘The “Obama Doctrine” and the Pivot’
By Ralph A. Cossa
PacNet #41
6/3/2014
President Obama's commencement address at West Point on May 28 appears to have been intended to send Americans and the international community a number of important messages. One of them was NOT that the U.S. commitment to the Asia “pivot” or “rebalance” was waning. For some, especially in Asia, the failure to mention this much-touted Asia policy has kindled fears that it is being reconsidered, if not abandoned. Those who are reading it that way seem to be missing a few major points, although the administration must share the blame for the misinterpretation.
Let me say at the onset that as an Asia security wonk, I would have much preferred that the president had mentioned the Asia rebalance at least once in passing, if for no other reason than to avoid the silly ensuing debate about what its absence signifies. “Obama quiet on Asia ‘pivot’,” cried a headline in the Bangkok Post, providing a case in point. Yes, the pivot was not mentioned; but he did state that “regional aggression that goes unchecked - in southern Ukraine, the South China Sea, or anywhere else in the world - will ultimately impact our allies, and could draw in our military.” While putting Ukraine and the South China Sea in the same sentence seems like overkill, it certainly does not signal neglect or a downplaying of the challenges we face in Asia.
To conclude that Obama's failure to mention the pivot reflects a lack of commitment to the region is nonsense. He did not just take a full week of his precious time traveling to Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines to reinforce a policy that he had planned to downplay or abandon. And his very pointed references to China, to the South China Sea, and even to the necessity of the U.S. finally ratifying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) all demonstrate that the Obama administration's commitment to Asia remains alive and well.
So did his inclusion of defense of allies as a U.S. ‘core interest’: “the United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it - when our people are threatened; when our livelihood is at stake; or when the security of our allies is in danger.” The only place where the security of our allies is threatened today is in Asia, on the Korean Peninsula, and in the East and South China Seas.
The real source of confusion regarding the president's West Point speech was that, administration hype notwithstanding, this was not really a “major foreign policy address” to “outline a broad vision for America's role in the world” or “to outline top national security goals.” As was appropriate to the immediate audience to which it was delivered, the address was primarily about military strategy, and more specifically about the use of military force. It was not a broader statement of U.S. foreign policy, which has important political and economic as well as military dimensions. There was no reference to APEC or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but also no references to the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement or any other trade matters. Other than a brief reference to support for democracy, human rights, and free and open economies, the speech was primarily about how best to combat challenges to U.S. security.
In the most simplified terms, it was Obama's version of the “Powell Doctrine,” in which then-General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell famously laid out a list of questions that should be answered affirmatively before the U.S. uses military force. These questions helped guide the George H.W. Bush administration as it prepared for the use of force to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait.
Regrettably, his son ignored a number of them in returning to Iraq a decade or so later, creating a situation that overextended the U.S. military, the U.S. economy, and U.S. credibility or “soft power” – the “costly mistakes” from Obama's perspective that “came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences, without building international support and legitimacy for our action, or leveling with the American people about the sacrifice required.”
The new “Obama Doctrine,” not unlike Powell's, cautions against the use of force as the first or best alternative: “US military action cannot be the only - or even primary - component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.” Recall one of Powell's questions: “Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?” Not to overplay the similarity, Powell also asked: “Do we have genuine broad international support?” Obama takes this one step further, arguing that in instances when the use of force is necessary, “we should not go it alone. Instead, we must mobilize allies and partners to take collective action.... We must do so because collective action in these circumstances is more likely to succeed, more likely to be sustained, and less likely to lead to costly mistakes.”
There was at least one very good reason for not mentioning the pivot in this address. One major criticism of the pivot is that, while broadcast as a multidimensional approach, it seems too military-centric. Focusing on the pivot or rebalance in the West Point address would have reinforced this concern. One suspects – and I claim no insider knowledge into the thinking of this administration – that there is greater concern today that the rest of the world thinks Washington is too focused on Asia than there is that Asians think Washington is about to abandon them. The address was about America's willingness to respond to global challenges and about how it should do just that. Asia is clearly a part of this but singling out Asia would have unnecessarily stressed the military dimension of the pivot.
Obama also addressed head on the issue of “America's relative decline.” Relative to what? As Obama correctly noted, “by most measures, America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world. Those who argue otherwise – who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away – are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.” Compared to the height of the Cold War, today there remains no peer competitor to the US, militarily, politically, or economically. Whose economy would you rather have today: America’s or China’s? And whose economic challenges would you rather have to face or try to manage?
A reluctance to use force to settle problems is not a sign of U.S. weakness but a sign of our strength and of our much-maligned soft power. Fareed Zakaria said it best: “What is needed from Washington is not a heroic exertion of American military power but rather a sustained effort to engage with allies, isolate enemies, support free markets and democratic values and push these positive trends forward.... An America that exaggerates threats, overreacts to problems and intervenes unilaterally would produce the very damage to its credibility that people are worried about.”
I would take one exception with President Obama's message. He asserted, rightly, when discussing Syria that “as President, I made a decision that we should not put American troops into the middle of this increasingly sectarian civil war, and I believe that is the right decision.” Yes, that's true and Asians in particular would have been distressed by another diversion of U.S. military assets away from their region.
But Obama missed a more important point. If it's true, as he asserted, that U.S. security interests are not directly involved to the degree that the application of military force is thus required, then he should not have established a “red line” in Syria regarding the use of chemical weapons in the first place. It was his failure to back up a red line in general, not the use of force in Syria per se, that had – and still has – Asians (and many Americans) concerned. President Obama failed to acknowledge or satisfactorily address this point.
(This article originally appeared in the PacNet Newsletter published by the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and Interational Studies (CSIS). Ralph A. Cossa is president of Pacific Forum CSIS.)
四
前幾天設在華府的智庫AEI(美國企業研究所)的國防與軍事專家
“Pivoting away from Asia”
By Gary Schmitt
Los Angeles Times
8/12/2014
----Renewed U.S. military presence in Iraq calls into question Obama's pivot from the Middle East toward Asia
What do President Obama's decision to authorize airstrikes against the Sunni militants of the Islamic State and his previous commitment to send American military advisors and trainers back into Iraq have to do with his "pivot" to Asia?Everything and nothing. [歐巴馬總統決定對伊斯蘭國的巽尼派好戰份子進行空襲，並派遣美
Nothing in the sense that the battle in Iraq has little bearing today on what China might do in the South China Sea tomorrow. But everything in the sense that the underlying assumption that drove Obama to pivot away from the Middle East toward Asia — to "rebalance," as it was later called — is very much in question. [作者說無關，原因是今天在伊拉克的戰鬥與明天中國可能在南海地
When the rebalance toward Asia was officially confirmed as administration policy in January 2012 by the Pentagon's release of a new strategic policy guidance, the underlying impetus was clear: Defense resources could no longer support the long-standing U.S. strategy of maintaining the capability to fight two major conflicts at the same time — the "two-war standard." With no apparent political prospects for closing the gap in military resources, the administration made a strategic decision to stabilize an increasingly problematic situation in Asia. [藉由國防部所發表的戰略政策指導，歐巴馬的「向亞洲進行再平衡
The logic for paying more attention to Asia was apparent. The region was seen as a key area of expansion for the American economy. Politically, it was home to populous liberal democracies, India and Indonesia; a newly vibrant South Korea; and long-standing friends and allies, like Taiwan and Japan. [美國對亞洲給予較大的關注的邏輯是顯而易見的。]
It was also home, of course, to a rising China. Initially, the Obama team had hoped to create a new dynamic with Beijing. Putting aside tension-inducing concerns such as China's human rights record, the plan was to develop a virtual smorgasbord of agenda items that would reflect overlapping interests between the two countries. The administration was doubling down on a policy of engagement.
As Obama discovered when the Chinese delegation upended his efforts to salvage the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit, overlapping interests are not the same thing as having the same priorities. China's leaders were undoubtedly concerned about the country's environmental problems, but their more pressing concern was making sure that the country continues to grow economically. More stringent carbon emission standards were, they believed, at odds with that more immediate need.
As the administration pivoted away from Europe and the Middle East, our adversaries have become emboldened -- and more than willing to fill the vacuum left behind.
As the Obama team also discovered, its attempts to engage more deeply with Beijing were complicated by the government's reaction. Beijing read these efforts as an implicit signal that a war-weary and recession-ridden Washington was scrambling to make the best of its declining global position. Instead of accepting the administration's offer of a new "G-2" condominium, China's ambitions seemed to grow — not recede — as it continued a military buildup and became even more assertive with neighboring states. [由於北京把歐巴馬繼承的美國當成是日薄西山的美國，把姿態放得
It was principally this deteriorating state of affairs that the administration rightly wanted to address with the rebalance.[主要是由於前揭的原因導致華府很正確地採
It also coincided with the administration's perspective that continuing to draw down military forces in Europe was reasonable in the absence of any perceived security problem facing the continent. It also squared with the president's own determination to end, as much as possible, military involvement in the Middle East and North Africa. Two-war capability isn't needed if your focus is really on only half the globe.
But this does not take into account a key strategic reason for maintaining two-war capability. According to the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, a four-year military policy and spending plan, having "a core capability is central … to avoiding a situation in which an aggressor in one region might be tempted to take advantage when U.S. forces are heavily engaged elsewhere." This broader military capacity also allows, the Clinton Pentagon argued, for "continued engagement in shaping the international environment to reduce the chances that such threats will develop in the first place."
In other words, power does abhor a vacuum. If the United States is not there to deter, would-be aggressors will probably take advantage.
Isn't this the situation the country faces today? As the administration pivoted away from Europe and the Middle East, our adversaries — be they Russia, Iran or the jihadists — have become emboldened and more than willing to fill the vacuum we have left. [在亞洲，中國赤裸裸的擴張野心受到美國與盟國、安全夥伴的牽制
Ironically, the Obama team harshly criticized the previous administration for foreign policies it viewed as off target — they accused the Bush administration of spending too much time focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and far too little on American diplomatic, economic and security interests in Asia. Yet today the very hot spots that are consuming the current administration's attention and dominating Secretary of State John F. Kerry's travel schedule are precisely those areas the Obama White House has wanted to disengage from militarily.
Without question, giving greater attention to Asia is called for, but if it comes at the expense of other key parts of the globe, it probably will be counterproductive. As the president is discovering, America's resources and attention will continue to be drawn back into those areas as the security situation worsens.[給予亞洲較大的關注是必需的，但這樣卻會犧牲
A true rebalancing is neither possible, given the state of today's U.S. military, nor likely to be sustainable if planned defense cuts are not reversed. The reality is that the United States cannot rebalance on the cheap.[]
Gary Schmitt is director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
台灣建州運動發起人周威霖
David C. Chou
Founder, Formosa Statehood Movement
(an organization devoted in current stage to making Taiwan a territorial commonwealth of the United States)
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